Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1887-07-30
on fertilizers it is not so. The crop takes
it up for the first year, and you can regu-
late the food according to the plants.


it up for the first year, and you can regu-
late the food according to the plants.
ROTATION OF CROPS.
From this follows one result as a corol-
larry, and that is that where you use fertil-
izers, you do not need the system of rota-
ton of crops. 1t strikes at the foundation
of that. There are certain chemical
changes in the soil by which certain kinds
of plant food are set free. The great rea-
son for rotation is that the plants we put
on one year take out certain elements and
leave others. If we put on another crop
the second year, it will find some of these
others. So we go on for three or four years
in rotation. But with commercial fertil-
izers we put on what the crop needs and it
takes it up at once There is nothing left
for another crop. We are not obliged to
put in ANYTHING for second year We
put in gust what the crop wants, and not
trouble ourselves about any future crops.
Now, in regard to barnyard manure, it
strikes me that there is not too much en-
phasis to be put upon the fact that you
cannot get all the elements the first year.
The percentage is about one-half per cent.
of nitrogen, one-half per cent. of potash
You cannot always find what the crop
wants of these elements without giving it
too much Crops need different amounts of
food. 1t is not necessary to go the whole
length of the Stockbridge theory in order
to admit this. Some need more ammonia,
and some more potash. | use the words
ammonia and nitrogen INTERCHANGEABLE
They are about the same thing, except
that ammonia has one-half per cent. of
hydrogen, so that in ammonia there is one
fifth more of plant food than there is to
be obtained in nitrogen. Therefore /
say that if you want to feed crop
great deal of nitrogen, you must put on
a great deal more phosphoric acid and
potash in barn manure than you want in
order to get enough potash There is one
weakness in the barnyard manure You
have to get great deal more of one ele-
ment in order to get enough of another
1t would be like ordering the same proper
tions of materials for building different
kinds of houses. 1t would be like having
as many boards and bricks to build a
wooden house, where you want the bricks
for nothing but chimneys, as for brick
house. The wise man will see that he has
bricks and boards for each house according
to his needs. This is the principle Of fer
| tilizers. You give the plants the elements
they want, Just as man would adapt his
quantity of bricks and boards to the differ
ent houses. He would give few bricks
to the house where they were wanted only
for a chimney, and make his supply of
| boards large in proportion. So much for q
| few general remarks
have made this subject somewhat
prominent, because | am myself using a
great many tons OF fertilizers yearly. Peo-
| pie come to see me, as / should go to them
in like case, to ask this question and that
| question, and to have me make suggestions
as to their use. / find that good many
have not got beyond the idea that fertii-
izer is a stimulus, and that it is an artif-
cial food anyway, an unnatural food, a
costly food, a fancy food, purely senti-
mental food, born in the laboratory. So
| they treat it not as real practical thing,
something that is natural in the progress
sive development of agriculture, but as an
exotic within and caprice, that theorists
are endeavoring to engraft on the healthy,
| old-fashioned, stable manure, in addition
to other things which the theorists talk
about, but will not be of any practical
benefit, which have got to have their run,
but which will not pay to have very much
to do with. They do not think that they
are real benefit to agriculture in thesam
way that manure is of advantage to crops